Sandy Lee

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the Member knows, this is under discussion at committee level and I need to get back to Cabinet for further direction and then dissemination of the information to the public. But as the Member knows, following the two or three-year debate we have had on what was then known as Supplementary Health Benefits Policy, which has now been rescinded and that policy allowed for extension of coverage to what we know as the working poor, but with the rescinding of the policy we are basically back to status quo, subject to some of the changes we are making or we are suggesting...

Mr. Chairman, it is reflected in the budget to a certain extent. We have improved in our medical travel component of Stanton Territorial Health Authority, for example. This year’s deficit is less than last year’s. It is reflected. I need to get the DM to give a little bit more detail on how our deficit picture has changed as a system. Thank you.

As the Member stated, this is an issue that involves housing and income security and other sorts of government network programs that might create barriers in terms of benefits that one might get. That is something that I would be willing to look at.

Going forward, though, it is something that future governments have to consider, because we do, in our Foundation for Change action plan, I believe it is the approach of any other government to encourage family members and communities to partake in taking care of our elderly and persons with needs as much as possible, and it’s something that we need...

I need to confirm that. I don’t know where the Member got that information. I’m not at all aware and I don’t believe that we use only one northern airline. We use both and we use smaller airlines as well, community airlines if they are available for medical travel, because we have people travelling from all over the Territories to Yellowknife and then on to Edmonton. Mr. Speaker, we use First Air and Canadian North to facilitate medical travel.

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

We need to consider separate factors from what the Member has suggested. What he’s saying is we should be able to neatly budget what the costs will be and have better control, although that’s one definition of control.

The second thing is, are you just going to spend and spend and spend and not have control? In health care we need a third factor, which is what we’ve been saying all along, that we are working within the system to be ready to respond to manage our resources wisely, but there is no way you are going to have a budget that is going to anticipate, predict and neatly categorize that...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We do do that. We do on-the-land treatment programs and it is part of our programming. I do admit that we have a bit of a patchwork funding, because it depends on the money we have in the department as well as some funding sources that we could find with the federal government. We approve those on an application-by-application basis. I agree with the Member that on-the-land addiction programs are a desirable way to go and one that I would support getting more of. I agree with the Member that we don’t have a comprehensive, across-the-board, all across the NWT...

The Member is absolutely right. We will ask to have that reworded. Thank you.

Introducing an income threshold for determining eligibility about medical escort would be a policy change. If that’s what the Members would like to consider, that’s something that needs to be discussed and changed in the policy and we know how difficult it is to determine eligibility of house benefits by income. I personally believe we should help those who need the help the most, and often it’s those who are under low income.

Mr. Chairman, as I stated, we are reviewing the Medical Travel Policy and there will be some recommendations coming out of that. Under current policy there is room for...

I need the Member to tell me how we determine the working poor if we don’t talk about income. Who are they? It’s everybody who’s not covered, right? So if we’re going to cover working poor without determining income, that means we are covering everybody. Everybody. I agree that might be something that everybody wants to do, some people might want to do. But we’re no longer then talking about working poor. We’re talking about having universal supplementary health benefits for everybody who lives in the Northwest Territories. That is a good public policy debate to have. We don’t have working...